Illuvium Game Review
Illuvium's Story:
Taking all this information from their Whitepaper, we can see a glimpse of Illuvium's story and world.
Your character sets out inn an intergalactic spaceship looking to check on a distress call. Seemingly being a Space Ranger, you must come to their aid.
To your surprise, once reaching that planet you find yourself on a ruined planet with no intelligent beings in your surroundings, in a wasteland, once noticing how hostile the environment is, your character tries to flee from the planet but is interrupted due to massive radiation that causes damage to the ship's engines.
On this planet, your character has to find ways to survive against the fauna of the planet. Conveniently, your race has already developed the energy that the fauna of this planet holds, so instead of becoming the victim of these creatures you'll start becoming the hunter. Looking to catch and control the "Illuvials" you'll use the energy in the harness for you to catch 'em all! (Yes, I felt obligated to make the joke)
Making your way through your survival, your character also will try to find ways to uncover the mysteries that are on this planet and what caused his downfall and look to disable the Obelisks that blocking your escape.
Compared to other Web3 games, Illuvium’s plot is much more developed with real thought behind the story and lore.
During our gameplay, one of the main factors of this game is the Illuvials, the residents of this planet that we are currently in.
Illuvials are amazing and deadly and can be found as we explore the environment in this world, their growth is provided by the essence of the planet that is constantly being spilled into the living in the form of radiation, similar to radiation that affected our spaceship.
Easier to understand, these Illuvials we can see them as more complex Pokemon-style creatures with more depth and strategy under their skin, so learning the fundamentals of each class and building a strategy will provide you great success during this gameplay.
Illuvium gameplay
Illuvium so far is still in development and its team keeps working hard to deliver a great project. A positive thing we must point out from Illuvium's team is how updated they keep their community on anything they do and why they do it.
Allowing the community to participate in the development of the gameplay and listening to feedback is what's giving so much power to the P2E crypto world compared to many other games out there despite not being launched yet.
Currently the game there are 3 game modes, with two currently available in the Beta for everyone who wants to play and try out the game, learning the basics, and providing feedback for the developers.
In this beta state, NO ONE can earn cryptocurrency, which is a healthy way to set the tone for future players as the game progresses and brings a positive vibe from the developer team and community. The current impact and actions of the game can be focused on gameplay and balance vs earning in a beta.
Gameplay is more in-depth than we could expect any Play2Earn in the current state of this genre. Illuvium in its current state has more refined content and could overtake any P2E out there when it comes to actual gameplay.
Why?
Its not because of how complex it is, but how caring the developers are and how much work they have dedicated to the gameplay, this can be one of those games where the players will play for the gameplay and not only for the earnings, which it was the case of Axie Infinity.
Illuvium has 3 games modes that are planned to be launched:
"Illuvium Arena"
"Illuvium Zero"
"Illuvium Overworld"
For now, Illuvium has already launched in a "Private Beta: 1" with the "Illuvium Arena" where we get to learn the first 150 Illuvials that are going to be played out.
Inside the "Illuvium Arena" gameplay there are a couple of modes to be played, but so far, the only one that'll be available is "Illuvium Arena: Survival"
**Illuvium Arena: Survival**
Source: Illuvium
In this auto-battler game mode, we will be fighting against "G4udi", an "autonomous trainer drone" that will be preparing hordes of Illuvials being thrown at us in rounds. Players must survive those rounds using the Illuvials that were given to us. Being provided a look at the first 150 genesis Illuvials (Tier 0 - at least for now) that will be included in the final game helps introduce players to core game mechanics.
The 150 Genesis Illuvials will have 5 starting Affinities. Knowing these classes will allow players to build their teams.
· Rogue
· Fighter
· Bulwork
· Empath
· Psion
Classes & Affinity are two types of combinations that Illuvials do have, which play an important role.
Similar to Pokémon, as you play with your Illuvials, they can evolve and become even stronger or different from your current Illuvial. For example:
Illuvial - Fire/Rogue (No evolution)
Illuvial - Fire/Slayer ( First Evolution - Affinity changed)
Illuvial - Inferno/Slayer (Second Evolution - Class changed, Affinity similar)
This being said, provides a different category and way to use your Illuvial to the player and create a different built, interestingly enough it all comes down to you fighting and being capable to analyze strategies.
"Illuvium Arena: survival" is an "auto battler-RPG-strategy" where Illuvials from both sides will fight automatically, meaning that the whole match takes place driven by AIs, depending on their class, affinity, among other factors the Illuvial's AI will react in consequence. Similar to chess, the goal is to remove your opponent pieces.
Illuvium's Arena genre will challenge your knowledge of the Illuvials and practice in the Arena. Interestingly enough, this mode is great to play competitively, and while simple it offers an Web3 version of its Web2 equivalents, Auto-Chess and Team Fight Tactics.
A positive suggestion could be adding another game mode on the "Illuvium Arena" where players will be limited on their Illuvials deck that can be used in a weekly season, providing higher levels of difficulty and for dedicated players to build a more competitive environment in the community. Having this limited mode is essential to most card games and allows everyone from casual to dedicated players to have their own space in the environment.
"Illuvium Zero"
One of their latest videos goes in-depth about this RTS-farming game mode.
You'll be available to play through your cellphone and desktop, allowing you to have more diversity in your possibilities to play it, not being restricted only to PC opens a much larger audience, as mobile gaming is the largest sector of the gaming audience.
Lately, the developers released new information with a demo of this game mode. These are subject to change, so we won't go too deep into this until there's more information on this game mode.
So far it will be an RTS game mode that will allow us to obtain resources and aid us through our gameplay in other game modes. According to the developers, these resources could potentially be sold as cryptos ERC-20 tokens
To play this game mode you can start by using the Tier 0 plot to play, however this is not connected to share revenue. This is the free to play feature to bring in new users.
Illuvium's team previously did a pre-sale of 20.000 plots out of 100.000. Plots that were for sale were from Tier 1 to Tier 5, higher tiers represent increasing rarity and higher fuel generation. The plot sales totaled 72$ million dollars allowing them to even more funds for the development.
Fuel is a key resource in this game, better to start farming it soon if possible.
Not everyone will have the budget to purchase one of these lands, creating potential monopolization of plot prices. Starting prices ranging from 2 ETH for Tier 1 plots and 80 ETH for Tier 4 plots.
Having great artwork on the environment and the structures that were built for you to harvest your resources more pleasantly; breaks the boundary of the "farming-click" P2E games.
Illuvium Overworld
One of the main core elements of Illuvium’s development, Overworld has been the core focus throughout this project’s history. Recently, Illuvium released a video showing some Overworld gameplay they have prepared so far. Check out the link below to see for yourself!
As a Ranger, there will be available to explore the seven regions that are spread on this wild and beautiful-looking planet. This begins our first experience with collecting Illuvials in real time.
According to the region we are checking, our chances of finding specific Illuvials would be higher or lower. For example, heading to a Fire region will increase your chances of finding Fire/Inferno affinity Illuvials but decrease chances of finding Ice/Frost Illuvials and vice versa.
To help you on your Overworld adventure you'll be with your fellow companion "Mozart". A helpful drone that assist in gathering useful resources from the environment , scan the zone that you are in, and obtain valuable information from the rifts that contain the Illuvials to capture.
While exploring these regions you'll have "energy" that will allow you to do double and triple jumps and use your jetpack to help you reach different spots on the map. This "energy" is represented as a bar will recharge once your character touches the ground.
One cool feature allows a player to slow down the camera similar to "Max Payne" while aiming to catch rifts before they disappear. (This feature can be seen in the demo video as well)
Fair enough to mention that all these mechanics are subject to change as the game keeps developing and more feedback and ideas keep coming up from the community.
Illuvium graphics & Mechanics
Stunning on every single pixel this game can deliver, making us forget this is a Play2Earn genre at Activision or EA levels.
Color usage is in the right contrast fitting the Sci-Fi color choice and helping us immerse into this amazing game. At first glance, this game could easily become a shooter game similar to Mass Effect: Andromeda which could potentially move forward giving more genres to this game.
Illuvials creation and design is very unique and well implemented for the sci-fi theme. These creatures feel compelling and totally beyond the design quality of projects with a similar theme. This remarkable work from the artist shows the time and study put in to create original artwork instead of replicating other work or projects.
Colors on this game fit very well and have huge positive impact on the gameplay and visuals. Some comments have been pointed out about how the world could potentially feel a little bit "too blatant" or "not organic". While this is an opinion held by some of their critics the team has been very flexible in making changes that add value and polish to the final product.
On "Illuvium: Overworld" most of the time is spent exploring the world and its inner dungeons, seeing different biomes across the planet, this with several purposes, finding the Obelisks (One of our main objectives) and finding Illuvials first and foremost. Illuvials are encountered through the "Rifts" that are displayed on the map. Your blaster will sustain the rift and allows players to challenge Illuvials inside. While the world is amazingly crafted, it can feel empty without Illuvials roaming around on the map in real time. Observing the movement and habits of Illuvials could add a much deeper layer of immersion to the open-world environment.
Illuvium Community
Illuvium's community is one of the most supportive so far always giving feedback, providing comments, and having powerful investors in their community.
The team is always providing footage of the gameplay they have been preparing and working on, raw footage, doing AMA, answering FAQs, and more. The aspect that many other crypto NFT projects hardly do well is communication of project progress, something highly valued by users in the web3 gaming space.
Sharing their knowledge on the development of a game and the addition of Defi and NFTs into their projects, they are sincerely showing what they have in mind, having open communication with their community has helped to get Illuvium in the place that it is right now. Not leaving their community in the shadows has given Illuvium the amount of support coveted by most projects. So far they have delivered on development goals and milestones consistently, lending credibility to the project team.
[CP8] An aspect that can be highly discussed is the decision to refrain from a pre-sale of Illuvials. According to the team this decision was made because "They don't want to give any advantage to any player".
One critique that can be made is the contradiction of the statement with the pre-sale of land for "Illuvium: Zero". These resources act as "fuel" which is key to the Illuvium universe and can be sold to other players on the marketplace. This is a direct advantage to players that can afford these plots to amass large amount of these resources. Until a final product is released it is important to recognize that, like any investment, there are always risks and choices made by developers can and do affect the investments of early adopters.
Despite criticism by some, the community has been very active and has praised Illuvium's team and their efforts. That's the power of community right there. Illuvium is a model forNFT-P2E-Defi projects across the space. By engaging the community, constantly giving updates, accepting feedback, and bringing a positive outlook, Illuvium has developed a committed and active following. Without having a full product released, Illuvium's token (ILV) All-Time-High was 1844$ on 11/29/2011, currently is 58$ due to the bear market and market sentiment of P2E games overall. Regardless of the drop of the price keeps being one of the strongest tokens of a P2E game out there.
Community is KEY in the Web 3 space.
Is it worth it to invest in Illuvium?
Difficult to say
Many have had a bad experience in Web 3 gaming space, a lot of promises being made and many not being fulfilled. This is not the case of Illuvium's team, they are constantly updating the community on what they are doing and what they want to do. This has been one of their strongest qualities of the team. and so far what they have done with the game is amazing. A reminder that any investment in Web3 games or any project comes with inherent risk, and should be made carefully.
Illuvium has also launched staking for the $ILV token, to not go too deep into it is always better to check videos on YouTube, check Sub-Reddits and ask on Discord about everyone's personal experience while staking. Everyone's returns, circumstances and perspective will be different. Some could potentially be investing just because they like the project, some because they expect to have great returns in the future, and others just because they have spare money. Needless to say, Illuvium so far has done a great job and their remarkable team is giving their best to provide a great project and keep the community up to date and engaged.
Easy to say, Illuvium is doing a great job, they are developing a game and treating their game like an actual game and not a P2E.
